And what, therefore, is loyalty proper, the life breath of all Society, but an effluence of Hero-Worship, submissive admiration for the truly great? Society is founded on Hero-Worship. . . . What we may call Heroarchy—Government of Heroes.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Lecture on “Heroes and Hero-Worship,”
Albermarle Street, London, 1840
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS took another long look at the tall blond young man with the clear innocent eyes. He certainly knows a lot, he thought, and he is out for blood in the name of his lady. . . . Quincy Adams was undecided. Jefferson and his father had finally patched up their long feud, in the face of impending death, but his mother, Abigail, had never forgiven Jefferson for Sally Hemings, nor for James Callender and Callender’s attacks on her husband. Should he give in to a sudden urge to voice his true opinions of Jefferson, though he never engaged in gossiping? He wondered whether this once he should let the chance to recount a fascinating parable of Jeffersonian duplicity get the better of his principles.
There was something ironic, almost biblical in Nathan Langdon’s strange addendum to the story of Sally Hemings. The closing of the circle, and final contradiction of turning her white for the sake of history. . . . Sally, he thought, probably had a fine sense of the ironic. The peasant-slave philosophy of her youth would have blended well with the cynicism of the French education she had received while in Paris. If he told this young man what he could not find in the Federalist papers, he would only corroborate what Sally Hemings herself had already revealed. How extraordinary that she had broken her silence at all, he thought.
“Well, I can’t say I know the whole story, but our family was closest to the truth of it. What I do know, however, is confidential, and I should categorically deny everything if it is repeated.” The rugged and ponderous Quincy Adams suddenly had the look of a mischievous boy. “The enigma of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson will never be completely solved. My parents were very close to Jefferson. What I know, and I know that what I know is true, I learned from them. Despite their difference with the president at the time, they tried to stay out of the scandal as much as they could. It was a tragic campaign.…“
“I know, some of the newspaper articles, and the pamphlets, were inexcusably virulent.”
Quincy Adams looked up over his spectacles. Could Nathan be hinting at his own poetic efforts at pornography? His miserable ballad referring to Sally had even bubbled up out of proportion during his own electoral campaign of 1828. Quincy Adams did not immediately take up the conversation. The Sally Hemings scandal had unfolded when he was young, and scrupulous enough to believe that the lives of public men should be led in accordance with their professed opinions … as his father’s had, he thought, thanks in great measure to his mother. He turned in his armchair and gazed out onto the cow pasture that stretched from the unfinished, unpaved Pennsylvania Avenue to the Potomac River. He was thoroughly ashamed of that awful poem.
He would admit that he had greatly admired Jefferson, Adams mused, for his erudition, his interest in science and letters, but that he had always mistrusted his political principles, and disliked many of his personal traits, including much stretching of the truth in favor of the well-turned phrases or the elegant aphorism. Jefferson’s affected simplicity irked him, too, when everyone knew his great wealth (if the number of slaves one owned could decently be counted as wealth). Then, too, he continued to think to himself, Jefferson’s tendency to live beyond his quite sufficient means offended his Yankee sense of thrift, and he also disdained any man unable to give his ideas a clear synthesis. Jefferson’s ideas were scattered in the most voluminous collection of letters of the century, yet nowhere in that morass of words, he thought, did Jefferson state clearly his political or moral principles in a way that corresponded to his political and personal actions.
Quincy Adams’ inner voice continued. Why had Thomas Jefferson, a staunch abolitionist up until 1790, suddenly lost all fastidiousness about slavery? Certainly during his presidency, at least the second term, he had had the political and moral power to turn the country around on this subject. Yet, from that time on he had sunk deeper and deeper into compromise with his beliefs, and into a lethargy that couldn’t be blamed entirely on the Virginia sun. Sally Hemings? Is that what turned him into a hypocritical gradualist, with no plan for accommodating the second race of America?
Nathan Langdon stirred politely, but Quincy Adams, unconcerned, continued his inner monologue.
That Jefferson had loved Sally Hemings he had no doubt. Whether Sally Hemings had loved Jefferson was less clear, since she had had no choice. That was the tragedy. That such an unnatural love may have changed the course of history, undoubtedly preventing Jefferson from using his power and genius to turn the tide against slavery instead of being an accomplice to all its darkest and most passionate aspects, was tragic indeed. . . . Why had Jefferson revised his stand against slavery when he returned from Paris? What had bound Jefferson to such a deep and lasting contradiction? He had not believed in God; therefore, all his ideas of obligation or retribution were bounded by this world. His duties to his neighbor had been under no stronger guarantee than the laws of the land and the opinions of the world. The tendency of this on a great mind was to produce insincerity and duplicity. Duplicity had ultimately been Thomas Jefferson’s besetting weakness.
Nathan Langdon uncrossed his legs and turned his gaze on the silent ex-president. He had come a long way in Washington since his first hesitant steps less than two years before. After his rupture with Sally Hemings he had lost his bearings. The humiliating memory of his broken engagement and his departure from home and family had almost been wiped out by the exhilaration of Washington. All aspects of his life had become resolved and clear, except one: Sally Hemings. Only she remained a haunting obsession. It was only now, after more than a year of working for John Quincy Adams, that he had dared bring up the subject—one that even after all these years had arisen in Quincy Adams’ own presidential campaign. He wanted that story, told in a lonely cabin at the foot of a mountain, corroborated. He was determined to do it.
Nathan waited. If there was one thing he had learned in Washington these past eighteen months, it was that when a politician starts off with a disclaimer, you were about to get the unvarnished truth. He faced Quincy Adams, not speaking, using his now perfected technique of never breaking the silence of another man.
“Sally Hemings was indeed in Paris with Jefferson for about two years …”John Quincy began.
Nathan Langdon listened, hopeful yet almost afraid of what he was about to hear.
“ … but my mother’s worst fears were realized, I’m afraid, since both James and Sally returned with Jefferson to Virginia after their two years in Paris. Her status at Monticello and those of her children were much above his other slaves. When I visited Monticello, I was startled to encounter one or several of them, for they were all house servants and practically advertised their paternity. It was mostly Northerners like myself who noticed. Southerners, especially Southern ladies, seemed to take it for granted. Or, should I say they were so inured to the situation they didn’t even blink an eye? I greatly admired their sang-froid … but then you would know about such things, having been brought up there.
“As for Jefferson, there was absolutely no embarrassment on his part and none evidenced by his daughters or family. All the children seemed to be brought up together. So great were his powers of self-deception that I doubt if he even noticed the stares of his guests—at least those who were not privy to Southern mores—at the resemblance of his slave children to his grandchildren. Yet as you know, so strong are the bonds of silence concerning this Southern taboo, and so ferocious the penalty for acknowledging even en famille the concubinal arrangements of Southern gentlemen when the partner is of the dusky race, that it was only when Jefferson sought a second term as president that the scandal broke. Of course, as I said, Virginians had their own private reasons for leaving Jefferson and Sally alone—their own dusky partners … Jefferson’s cousin and enemy, Chief Justice John Marshall, for example. . . .”
Nathan Langdon smiled. John Quincy Adams was warming to his story as it began to touch politics rather than sentiment. Nathan had had no idea about Chief Justice Marshall.
“My mother and father kept their peace, out of embarrassment and loyalty, and in my father’s case, a deep love. But my mother could never forgive Jefferson—either privately or publicly—for what she considered a betrayal of Sally, his daughters, and herself. For you must remember, the publicity, when it came, had to be borne not only by Jefferson but by his friends, family, and daughters. It was political suicide. Political suicide,” he repeated, shaking his head. Then he went on:
“My father blamed this extraordinary and tragic story on the damnable institution of chattel slavery, and he was right. Nothing is more important to the ultimate survival of this country than the abolishment of slavery. I have introduced in the House a petition for the abolishment of slavery and the slave trade on behalf of the Pennsylvania Quakers … I intend to do it again and again. To force the government to face and discuss this abomination. The end of the slave trade and slavery is inevitable. What is at stake is whether it will come peacefully and legislated, or in a river of blood, in the not too distant future. You, my friend, will doubtless live to see it. So will the children of Sally Hemings. I have an abhorrence of slavery, but just how bad it is no one can imagine without understanding the details.”
“I know,” said Nathan Langdon softly. All those women’s voices he had heard on the day of Turner’s trial suddenly filled his head, the room.
“This subject of slavery,” continued Quincy Adams, “to my great sorrow and mortification, is absorbing all my faculties!” Adams stared gloomily ahead. He had not meant to speak with such passion. The story he had just told had dredged up the most disturbing emotions and passions. But he was stuck with it. And what did it matter now, thirty years later? One didn’t cure the evils of this world by repeating them. He had been president when Jefferson had died. Today Sally Hemings probably wanted to be left alone, to die in peace and anonymity. It was with a certain anxiety that Quincy Adams met the startled, almost childish gaze of Langdon.
“You know, Nathan, you should read Thomas Jefferson’s autobiography.” Adams spoke again to the young man. “It is regrettable that it ends on the twenty-first of March, 1790, the day he arrived in New York to take up his post as secretary of state. It should have begun there. . . . It seems as if Jefferson made some pact with himself not to speak of himself. Every man, great or small, needs one place where he can explain himself.
“From 1790 to the end of Jefferson’s presidency, his ardent passion for the rights of man, his patriotism, the depth of his understanding, the extent and variety of his knowledge, the constant awareness of public opinion, and finally the pliability of principle which he accommodated to his own designs—all these facets of his character emerged during those twenty years. And with them were combined a rare mixture of philosophy and epicurean morals, of burning ambition and stoic selfcontrol, of deep duplicity and generous sensibility, between which qualities, and a treacherous and inventive memory, his conduct appears a tissue of inconsistency.”
Adams thought back on the appropriate conclusion he had written in his private diary: “When genius pandered to the will, deceiving others meant one must have begun by deceiving oneself.” It was power that was the great deceiver, and those who wielded it were the first to be deceived. How well he knew. It was Jefferson himself who had been the first deceived. He had deceived himself into believing he could love a woman he held in slavery. He had deceived Sally Hemings into believing a man that held her in such servitude could love her. Adams wondered suddenly if she had realized this finally, or had she loved him to the end?
Langdon had gotten what he wanted. But he could not help seeking more.
“But—from what I’ve read—there must have been a terrible row during his first term about Sally Hemings. Why did Jefferson risk losing the second term?”
A vision of those golden eyes flashed in Langdon’s mind, and he dreamed for a second at what he would have done for them. Despite himself he blushed deeply.
“Why did he persist in the face of such humiliation?” asked Nathan Langdon. Quincy Adams smiled.
“It was all in the family, you might say, Nathan, never to be touched by anything from the outside. Washington Irving described it best. ‘In a large Virginia estate, the mansion is the seat of government, with its numerous dependencies such as kitchens, smokehouses, workshops and stables. In this mansion, the planter is supreme: his overseer is his prime minister, he has his legion of house Negroes for domestic service, his host of field Negroes, a standing army; a national treasury for the culture of tobacco and cotton. All this forms a kingdom. A plantation produces everything within itself for ordinary use and luxuries, fashion, elegance is carried on with London and Paris, up the Potomac like foreign trade. . . . Everything, you understand, comes from the plantation.’ ” Quincy Adams paused. “The absolute power of life and death over other mortals, that was the very air he breathed. It gave him, the great democrat, a magisterial view of the world. Therefore, my dear boy, nothing could humiliate Thomas Jefferson. He was, you might say, Olympian.”
Let Dusky Sally henceforth bear
The name of Isabella
And let the mountain, all of salt
Be christen’d Monticella
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 1803